Nanoose Bay has a long been home to the the Nanoose First Nation (Snaw-Naw-As), who along with 18 other tribes in the Salish Sea are Coast Salish people.
It’s also been home to marinas, and aquaculture, a large lumber mill, and currently the Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental Test Range (CFMETR).
There’s a bit of history here:
- 1951: The land for the CFMETR base at Nanoose Bay is expropriated by the federal government in 1951.
- 1965: Canada and the United States agreed upon the establishment, operation and maintenance of a torpedo test range at Nanoose Bay in the Strait of Georgia.
- 1967: The Supreme Court of Canada considered a reference to determine whether the seabed within the three-mile limit of the west coast territorial sea, and the associated mineral resources, were owned by the Province of British Columbia or Canada. The Supreme Court held that Canada had both jurisdiction over and property rights in the territorial sea, from the low-water mark of the province to the territorial boundary recognized by international law.
- 1984: British Columbia claimed that the historical documentation surrounding the establishment of the province proved that certain bodies of water, and the seabed beneath them, had in fact been within the boundaries of the province at Confederation, and were therefore still the property of the province. The Supreme Court of Canada finds that the Province of British Columbia still had ownership of the seabed of the Strait of Georgia.
- 1988: The foreshore was transferred to Canada by British Columbia in 1988, for military use over a period of 60 years.
- 1989: The federal and provincial governments signed a ten-year “licence of occupation” under the British Columbia Land Act.
- 1996: The Federal Court rejected a SPEC challenge of a decision by then Environment Minister Sheila Copps to exempt US warships from Canadian environmental regulations that prohibit the dumping of toxic materials into fish bearing waters.
- 1997: The British Columbia government gave notice that it would terminate the licence, because it was not satisfied with the progress of Canada-U.S. negotiations on the Pacific Salmon Treaty. The Government of Canada initiates a court challenge in the Superior Court of British Columbia to prevent an early termination of the agreement with the Government of British Columbia.
- 1999: The government of Canada announced that it had begun the process of expropriating the seabed at CFMETR.
- 2002: Federal Court Justice Douglas Campbell had ruled in favour of an appeal by the Society Promoting Environmental Conservation and overturned the 1999 expropriation. Campbell decided that the officer in charge of the expropriation hearings had not given sufficient notice to a significant number of citizens groups and individuals to make presentations at the public hearing.
- 2003: The Federal Court of Appeal reverses the Federal Court decision that had overturned the 1999 expropriation of the Nanoose torpedo test range near Nanaimo.
And today… there is not much that remains.
